Trial Balance

[CCAAT]

On 06/07/14 06:33, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
>
>>
>> Well, I think my trial balance report for 2013 is wrong. It shows
>> numbers from 2012 that I know for sure I have in 2012 and not
>> tax year 2012 (income from consulting for example. I did filter
>> by dates (1/1/13 to 12/31/13) but I still get numbers for 2012
>> included on the trial balance. The income statement report and the
>> balance sheet report for those dates are perfect. All the 2013 data
>> is in gnucash. I have saved, exited and reloaded the application
>> and I still get numbers from 2012 included on the trial balance.
>>
>> Is that the (accounting) way the trial balance is suppose to work?
>> Or should 2013 be just a snapshot of 2013?   Is the trial balance report
>> a cumulative report by its definition?
>>
>>
>> confused and not an accountant.
>
> First general, then more specific.
>
> a) Programs and data are not the same thing, independent of each other
> (and in general, not just with gnucash but most applications you might
> use). That means in a situation like this reinstalling the program is
> NOT going to make a difference.
>
> b) Trial balance ---- you want to use this for what? You say you are
> "confused and not an accountant". In the old days, manual bookkeeping
> pen and ink on paper* the trial balance was important, checking that the
> books WERE in balance, no errors because a transaction was entered out
> of balance or some digits were copied incorrectly during the "posting"
> process. Errors of this sort were very common and each had to be found
> and corrected and there were tricks/rules of thumb for how to find the
> (likely) source of the error depending on the amount of the out of
> balance in the trial balance.
>
>     But gnucash won't allow a transaction to be entered out of balance
> and its autoposting never copies a number incorrectly. If there is
> nothing in the Imbalance" or "Orphan" accounts then your books ARE in
> balance. Because "trial balance" was important in the old days gnucash
> still provides this report but for us ordinary users no longer
> particularly useful. That's why I was asking you WHY you were running
> it, what you planned to do with it. Assuming the report had shown an out
> of balance amount, do you know the old tricks/rules of thumb that would
> help you find the error? << I'm old enough to remember some of these
> rules, like if the out of balance amount is divisible by 9, look for a
> transposed digit error >>
>
> Michael

Yes, I have a ZERO imbalance, so it is fine, despite my ignorance.
My accountant wants to see the "Trial Balance" to verify the books are
balanced......

Thanks for the education on what a TB is and why and how it is useful.

James




>
> * Or the more modern equivalent, using spreadsheets with columns set up
> to be the way old fashioned "journal" and "ledger" sheets were ruled,
> but transactions entered and posted like in the old days and subject to
> most (but not all) of the same errors -- errors in addition the
> spreadsheet would not make but transcription errors, transposition
> errors, yes.
>